Chapter Four

WITH RAINDROPS BEADING on his woollen cap, Felix led Vince and Sorcha to the cemetery behind the Star We Sail By. A piece of land surrounded by a rotting wooden fence, at its core stood a single yew tree. They picked their way among the spherical gravestones. The wealthier the grave’s occupant, the larger the sphere. Family members’ gravestones orbited the older, moss-covered orbs of distant ancestors, like little planets around their own sun.

The cemetery stopped a few paces from the edge of a steep, chalk-white cliff and Felix pointed down to some rocks. “There’s an inlet just there,” he said. “No beach, no place to land but you can sail right in.” He kept back, worried the incessant drizzle of the morning had made the grassy verge slippery.

Vince had no such concerns. He marched right to the edge and peered down. “Chancewater,” he said. “Didn’t think anyone was still using it.”

Sorcha rolled her eyes. “Of course you know about it.”

Felix stood behind Vince, behind the vast bulk of him, and wondered what would happen if he were to put his hands on Vince’s back and shove with all his might. In normal circumstances, Felix likely wouldn’t stand a chance of budging him an inch but with the wet grass and the pull of the cliff’s edge…surely they would do most of the work for him? This might be his only chance to rid Port Knot of its ruin.

“Star We Sail By isn’t the only place to use it,” Vince said, snapping Felix from his daydream. “Used to be a few other alehouses connected to those tunnels.”

“Playhouse,” Felix said.

Vince ignored him. “Dangerous. Small. Been a few cave-ins, as I recall.”

“Uncle Gregory used to make me meet smugglers in those tunnels.” The moment had passed, and Vince had walked back a few yards. Felix had missed his chance. “He used to get salt from Brittany, before the customs house got wise to other people using the tunnels. I can’t imagine he’d given up the practice entirely, though where he’s been hiding the goods nowadays, I couldn’t say. The cellar at the Star is crowded enough as it is.”

“Will have to check the tunnels,” Vince said. “Sorcha, first thing tomorrow, get some Watchfolk in there.”

“You think my uncle is down there?” Felix asked. “I suppose he could have had an accident…”

“More likely he’s dead,” Vince said. “Meeting with a supplier turned violent. Seen more than one person meet a sticky end in there.”

Felix exhaled loudly, whistling a little through the gap between his teeth. He shivered, but not from the rainfall. He found Vince’s stilted manner of speech most off-putting. The way he missed the start of every sentence blunted his words so they hit like hammers.

Sorcha shot Vince a look. “Tactful as ever, aul man.” She put her hand on Felix’s arm. “It’s only been a couple of days. We’ll find him. I promise.”

LIKE MOST BUILDINGS in the town, the Star We Sail By was tan-hued and half-timbered. Its double doors were sunk between two bay windows and upon entering, one found oneself in a long, high-ceilinged room, cleanly split down the middle. To the left, a long row of benches broken only by a small hearth ran the length of the wood-panelled walls beneath tilted looking glasses, grubby and wearing at the edges. To the immediate right, a clockwork lift granted access to the upper floors and next to it, the bar proper stood in front of yet another looking glass and shelves of liquor. In the middle of the room could be found table after table with chairs and stools. Finally, at the far end of the room, heavy purple curtains adorned a small stage.

“It’s barely a quarter of the size it had been in the Star’s heyday,” Felix said of the stage.

“As the town’s interest in theatre dwindled and its interest in gin rose,” Mr Tassiter said, “the stage shrank, losing prominence, an aging beauty fading and shrinking against the shiny new baubles come to tempt its admirers away.”

Felix trudged across the sticky floor and sat at a grimy table by an unwashed window. Above him, the chessboard pattern of the ceiling he so clearly remembered from his youth had become stained a grimy mustard colour.

“The Star may not be what she once was,” Mr Tassiter said, “but there’s hardly an actor in town who didn’t tread her boards and cut their teeth here.”

Felix had been unable to convince Dick Tassiter to leave so resigned himself to having him permanently installed at the corner of the bar closest to the front doors.

“It used to be a rite of passage, you know,” Mr Tassiter said. “Every young performer—youthful in experience if not in age—would go through the same rituals. Singing in front of a rowdy crowd, monologuing in front of an indifferent crowd, dodging rotten vegetables from a belligerent crowd.”

“Going to open up again?” Vince asked. “People need alehouses. Keeps them off the streets.” He flicked rainwater from his tricorne and slumped onto a bench.

“Stop calling it an alehouse,” Felix said. “It’s not an alehouse; it’s never been an alehouse. At least, it was never meant to be one.” He glanced towards the stage. “This was supposed to be a theatre.”

Vince snorted a laugh. “Hate to break it to you but this place has never been much more than a cherry house. Know many theatres with topless boys and girls hanging off the balcony, beckoning punters inside? Don’t know what memories you have of the nights here, but I bet mine are a damn sight clearer. Want a theatre, go over on Quarrier’s Run. See an opera, some Shakespeare. Want to hear a bawdy song from the tropics? See a puppet show about the council’s dalliances behind closed doors? Want to watch a man try to lick himself? Come to the Star.”

Sorcha threw her hands in the air and stared at him. “Tact. Tact.”

Felix knew the place had a reputation, of course. For every actor, there was the temptation to join the bedworkers plying their trade from the Star’s notorious sailboat balcony. It was good money, better than a young actor could hope to earn, and if one was the kind to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh, why not make some extra money at the same time? It did no harm to one’s reputation, and indeed, knowing about an actor’s past added—in the eyes of the audience—a certain frisson to their performance. The skilled actor, upon embarking on a chaste and innocent role, would learn when to wink knowingly to a crowd well-versed in their history. Blackrabbiters found brazenness endearing. The sailboat balcony was infamous even in his day. He remembered well the sailors who docked had a rite of passage involving their partner of choice and a very intimate act performed on the balcony to the cheers of onlookers.

But he remembered the other nights. The nights when singers with voices of honey and gold sang their hearts out on stage. When actors moved him to tears with their soliloquies. That was how he chose to remember the Star We Sail By.

The Star had been a constant fixture in the life of the Diamond family since Gregory had first opened it, just shy of thirty years prior. While Gregory absolutely forbade any of the family from conducting business within its walls, he did initially allow them to drink there, provided they behaved themselves, which they seldom did. Something about being allowed in drove them giddy with excitement, and they would soon lose the run of themselves. Before long, Gregory closed the Star to Diamond trade.

That said, more than a dozen Diamond children had been sheltered there by Gregory in the years Felix had lived in the place, and he was certain there had been plenty more since. Uncle Gregory had never turned his back on a Diamond in need, and it had been a great source of comfort to the family to know that no matter how far they fell, their children would always have a home to go to. Provided they obeyed Uncle Gregory’s rules.

“Anyone special in Gregory’s life?” Vince asked. “Liked women, didn’t he?”

“There was someone,” Mr Tassiter said. “I saw them groping one another on the stairs a couple of times. Big woman. What’s her name?” He frowned, and squinted, and dredged his gin-soaked memory. “Underhay,” he said. “Briony Underhay. Gregory talked about her a little. I saw them together over Samhain. I teased him about proposing, and he got this funny, watery look in his eye. I didn’t think he’d ever wed again. I thought they were just screwing.”

“Know her. Works on the docks. Will have a word.” Vince slapped his own meaty thighs as he stood up. “Last time Gregory was here? Last time anyone saw him?”

“I came by around sunset,” Dick Tassiter said. “He’d already gone and locked the Star up tight. I met the barmaid on the road outside, and she said he’d rushed out in a hurry but didn’t say where he was going.”

“Barmaid?” Vince asked.

FELIX HURRIED ALONG the road after Vince. For a big man, Vince moved surprisingly quickly. He dodged and weaved through the crowds, and ducked down tiny alleyways Felix didn’t even know existed.

“Probably weren’t built when you were last here,” Vince said. “Port Knot doesn’t sit still.”

They arrived at the address Dick Tassiter had given them, amongst a square mile packed tightly with skinny, run-down houses, no two exactly alike, but each punctured with clanging and steaming copper pipes. Washing hung from lines overhead and clockwork mangles rattled and popped as children ran wet clothes through them. Voices came from within the house—adult voices, singing and shouting, some laughing.

Vince knocked on the door. Then he thumped on it with his fist.

“Give them a chance,” Felix said.

“Want to find your uncle or not?” Vince asked. “Longer he’s missing, harder it’ll be.”

“You already think he’s…gone,” Felix said.

The door opened a crack, and a woman with a pleasant, plump face peered out. “Yes?”

“Hannah Hornby? Need to talk,” Vince said, pushing the door open. He stopped just short of barging in.

Ms Hornby flinched and stood frozen to the spot, staring up at Vince’s scowling countenance. Behind her, some men and women sat at a table playing cards. Others passed through on their way to another room.

“Work at the Star We Sail By?” Vince asked.

“I do,” Ms Hornby said. “I’m a dash. A barmaid. Or I was until it closed. I don’t know if it’s ever going to open again, I had to take on extra lodgers just to make ends meet.” She smiled and wiped her palms on the front of her skirt. Vince’s comportment made her nervous.

Vince leaned in, just a touch. “Need to know what happened last time you saw Gregory Diamond.”

Ms Hornby took a moment to gather her thoughts. Or her courage. “I was clearing tables, as usual, just before sunset this was. Gregory was behind the bar when all of a sudden his face dropped. He kicked everyone out—me included—and bolted the doors. I’ve not seen him since.”

“And you actually saw him leave the Star?” Felix asked.

Ms Hornby crossed her arms. “Well, not exactly. He must have left by the back door because I hung around the front for ages, waiting to talk to him.”

“Anything happen just before?” Vince asked. “Customer come in? Someone speak to him?”

“No, nothing,” she said. “It was quiet, only a handful of people in.”

“Know their names?” Vince asked.

“Sorry, I don’t. But they were so soused they probably wouldn’t have noticed anything.”

Vince stared at her silently for a moment before nodding curtly and walking away.

Felix tried to keep up. “You didn’t need to shove her door open like that, you know.”

On a tiny, damp road, barely wide enough for two people, Vince stopped in his tracks and stared down at him. “Known people to hide weapons behind doors. Cudgels. Knives. Pistols. All sorts. Had to be careful.”

“You scared her,” Felix said.

Vince scowled at him. “Worth it.”